The Mystery of Old Trees

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Photography, Scenic, Writing

“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Thunder purred contentedly in the distance from a sky lowering and dark. After a brief, pearly March shower, the damp, rain-washed world was a landscape changed and new and fragrant. The browns were richer, the greens were more alive, the grey of the sky was lowering above the horizon. Scattered tufts of lichen, usually dry and tough, were soft as ferns and green like gems. The rust-colored earth crumbled under our feet, soft and damp. Garnets in the creekbed were redder and glassier, the dust of the summer washed away.

There is a mystery in the trees, a story untold, a winding path still unexplored. There is beauty, yes, but it must be the sense of wild and untamed mystery that calls us back. There is the allure of constant change, as the shadows shift and deepen, as cool breeze dances with warm, as the voice of the woods quiets then sings then quiets again.

The woods are rich with the fragrance of damp earth and musky leaves, and are wealthy with the myriad hidden things, those subtle treasures hidden in the undergrowth, or tucked beneath a fallen limb, or nestled in the knee-high grasses. There is the misty pink of birch bark, or the rainbow hidden in the heart of a snowy crystal. There are the brightly glowing hulls of autumn berries, still clinging to their trees, opened gaily like flowers in the dead of winter.

Another brief rainshower blustered up while we were walking Battle Creek, a wall of red rock, pocketed with hollowed-out places, towering beside us. The rain came down like beads of glass, and the sun broke through the clouds, making the rocks glow. I don’t think I’d weary of these trails if I hiked the same ones for 100 years. There is always something I never saw before, air I never breathed before, perfumes I never smelt before. And each time there is a renewing. The sort of renewing that comes from peering closely at little things of beauty. The sort of renewing that comes from listening to the silence. The sort of renewing that comes from welcoming the dirt and the mud. The sort of renewing that comes from taking the time to wonder. The sort of renewing that comes from breathing deep of the clean, moist air.

That is the mystery found among old trees.

Muddy Boots, Fresh Soul

Posted on February 20, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

When the temperatures soar into the 50s and 60s in February, the only thing I want is to be outside! On Wednesday, after getting some mundane duties done in the morning and running an errand to Mt. Rushmore, Sarah and I took off for Big Falls, the site of some old mining operations from the early part of last century. Battle Creek roars through a deep ravine, and pours over a falls into a deep pool some twenty feet below. In the hot summer months, it is a popular swimming destination, but I think I prefer it in the off season.

The sun, which had shone so brightly in the morning, was obscured by cloud-cover, but it was still a beautiful day, balmy, fresh, and quiet. The road to Big Falls is forest service access, which means not a lot of road maintenance, particularly this time of year. But the old orange Jeep can take just about anything, including the mud from the snowmelt, and the washed-out places.

The hike down from the trailhead is short, steep, and beautiful. The creek was frozen thickly over in places, but the clear, clean mountain water still rushed and chuckled over the rocks and under the ice. The last quarter mile follows Battle Creek, so we poked around on the sandbars looking for garnets, picking up odd rocks and chunks of quartz, snapped some pictures, scrambled around on boulders, enjoying the damp and the balmy winter air. And the quiet. We stayed on the upstream side of the Falls and ate a little picnic of apples. We tossed the apple cores into the stream and watched them eddy around until they were caught in the current and shot over the edge into the pool below. In the middle of a busy week, how pleasant it was to simply sit and enjoy the beauty in the depth of the Hills!

On our way back out, almost to the top, we dawdled in a clearing at the edge of the canyon, and caught a glimpse of something a half mile down the canyon and across. I grabbed my camera and my 300mm lens and sure enough, there was a mountain goat standing on the edge of a precipice. He was barely distinguishable in the picture, in the right upper quadrant of the photo, but clearly a mountain goat.

We took a few pictures of the far away goat before realizing that directly across the canyon from us, there were two more! One of them just lay there, looking calmly at us, unbothered. I wonder how long he had been keeping an eye on us. I don’t see mountain goats very often – Sometimes they can be seen around Mt. Rushmore, and I’ve seen them while hiking Harney Peak, but this is the first time I’d seen them by Big Falls.

After soaking up the freshness of February, the peace of the wilderness, the cool damp of the Battle Creek air, we headed home reluctantly. We were a little muddy, a little leg sore, and a lot refreshed. It was one of those days when I was even more thankful than usual for where I live, this beautiful place I’ve always loved.

January | In Hindsight

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

The new year has already been flying by! We’re 17 days into February and I haven’t even taken the time to write a review of the month of January. Time flies too quickly. The month of January was a quiet month. That really is nice sometimes. The quiet and the mundane are appreciated after the hurry and bustle of the Christmas holidays.

The Christmas bustle was just sifting away, like a breath of snow, when Jess and her fiance Nick came to visit. For a week, I enjoyed some time off spent with them and the rest of the family. We enjoyed the typical tourist activities, like Mt. Rushmore and the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park, as well as some less-frequented gems, like Spokane. We were also able to take a day to drive down to our property in Pringle. Since it is an hour and a half south of us and it isn’t even remotely “on our way” anywhere, we don’t get down there very often. When we do, it is a joy! Such beautiful country it is down there. So remote and wild and untouched.

When I was able, I spent time working in the Miner’s Cabin to get it closer to being livable – Dad and Sarah got a lot done, working on the wiring, getting the wood stove usable, and sorting through years of keepsakes and books and artifacts. With the wood stove going, the Miner’s Cabin is now a wonderful haven even in the coldest weather. The stove is rather too big for the cabin, but it sure heats it up quickly! I spent hours out there in January enjoying the quiet, sewing some new skirts, listening to “Adventures in Odyssey” and Zane Grey, and enjoying feeling the warmth slowly take over the little house. I am really looking forward to being able to move out there.

January was sprinkled throughout with ideal weather – Anything from 50 degrees and sunny to 15 degrees and snowing. A beautiful snow storm or two afforded some lovely hiking – One hike in particular through the heavily falling snow was like walking through a fairyland. Time after time, I wished I had my camera, but I’m sure I would have dropped it multiple times as we all slipped and slid through ravines and creek beds.

So January rolled by quietly and unobtrusively, punctuated at last with the romp of rodeo at the Black Hills Stock Show. Great times. It is always encouraging to see such a crowd come together for some good, clean fun, for a sport that is so steeped in hard work, sweat, and Western dust and dirt.

The months keep breezing by – Each with their own flavor and their own set of memories. The first month of the year is past. And there are 11 more months to go in 2016!

Hidden Treasure

Posted on January 17, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

The beauty of winter is of an entirely different character than the beauty of spring, summer, and autumn. If the beauty of the seasons could be described in terms of music, spring, summer, and autumn would be various moods of an orchestral masterpiece. But the beauty of winter would be akin to a wistful flute solo, soaring airy just out of reach of complete comprehension. At the heart of winter is simplicity.

The beauty of winter is in the illumination of those things which, in the green and growing months, are often obscured by the glorious and gaudy, the lush and lavish, the bright and boisterous. Those little things, those hidden treasures, suddenly come to light. When there is nothing else more eye-catching to marvel at, then the colors in a curl of white bark, or the mysterious shimmer of falling snow, or the patterns of frost on a pane of glass can be appreciated for their otherworldly, exquisite simplicity.

A winter hike is a like a search for hidden treasure. Instead of tangible, quantifiable beauty, like a flower, or a green, green landscape, it is the intangible, the play of lights and shadows that make the beauty of winter. To see the beauty of winter, it is necessary oftentimes to look closer, to look deeper into the well of beauty.

When I find something in summer that catches my eye, it is often something unmistakable like a blooming flower, or a certain cluster of trees, or a gold-lined autumn path, or the way the landscape shimmers in evening. But in winter, those things that catch my eye are often the things that grow deep in the underbrush, or which nestle close at the base of a tree, or which cling to bare branches, or the way the snow outlines the hillside or the tree or the fenceline, or those moments which I cannot duplicate, like light streaming through a broken jar, or glowing through husks of flowers, or the specific way the snow fell heavy and silent for five minutes during that one snowfall, or footprints in a freshly fallen snow.

Hiking yesterday with Roy and Reagan and Anna, the trees were covered over with snow. The beauty was breathtaking. Snow fell from the branches as we walked beneath them in their silence. Snow fell from the sky as we walked beneath the peace and serenity of the clouds. We tried to catch snowflakes on our tongues. The beauty was in seeing the normally unseen, the giant dead pine with pine cones squirreled away inside of it, on a steep hillside we’ve never hiked before, or the rock overhang with crystals as thick as my little finger, or scrambling over, though, under, and between snowy branches, slipping and falling in the snow, crawling through brush that would normally be all but impassible in the summer, shaking snow from branches and sending it showering down all around.

The treasure of winter is the subtlety of its gifts.

Family Fun

Posted on January 15, 2016 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Jess, our Illinois sister, and her fiance Nick were here this past week, and it was fun getting to know the two of them as a couple. Nick has been a family friend for years, and I guess it suddenly just dawned on them that each of them existed and they weren’t as obnoxious as each of them remembers the other being. Something like that. Anyway, they are getting married this year! Just when we think things are settling down, more change happens! Exciting.

Since Nick hasn’t ever had the pleasure of exploring the Black Hills, we made that a priority. We drove Iron Mountain Road, made a pit stop at the ghost town of Spokane, visited Mt. Rushmore, and did the Wildlife Loop in Custer State Park. The weather was cooperative, the traffic was nonexistent, and the burros were obliging. Even the buffalo graced the roadside with their presence. Lots to do that first day Jess and Nick were here! We were all glad to be home at the end of the day.

On Wednesday, we enjoyed 50 degree weather in the afternoon and three inches of leftover snow on the ground – What a wonderful combination! Perfect for a visit to our favorite haunt, the Hole-in-the-Wall, and then a walk up Battle Creek until we got to the Mountain Lion Cave. It really was perfect. No ticks, or spiders, or rattlesnakes to watch out for, so we scrambled over and under and around and through to our heart’s content. Jess got a giant clump of cockleburrs in her hair, which we thought would need to be cut out, but Nick and Sarah managed to rescue her. Nothing like a new pair of eyes along for the hike that renews my appreciation for the beauty I get to see every day. I’m looking forward to springtime, or at least more springtime weather, and watching the magical change from winter to spring.

We took a jaunt down to our property in Pringle yesterday, and the further south we got, the more wintry and windy it got. But we kept our hiking to the ravines and canyons, and managed to be out of the wind for most of the afternoon. We found the way down into Box Canyon, and the perspective was astounding. I’d never seen Box Canyon except from the top, and the size of the cottonwoods in the bottom of the canyon just about took my breath away. I’d love to know how old those trees are, and who saw them when they were just saplings, if anyone saw them. Custer himself might have seen them, when they were already magnificent trees.

Water seeping through the rocks, probably from the Spring-on-Hill source, but possibly from snowmelt, had created some impressive icicles on the underside of the canyon. Moss was abundant. An owl seemed to be living in one of the old cottonwoods, but I didn’t get a good enough look at him to know what he was.

Jess and Nick leave tomorrow morning early, in order to make it back to Illinois by tomorrow night. The next few months are going to fly by, with wedding preparations and planning and the actual wedding coming up in the spring. It was so good to get to spend time with them.

I love my family.

Snow Magic

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Laura Lindblom under Uncategorized

Snow changes everything. A drab, brown, winter landscape becomes a fairy world. A moonlit night becomes silver bright. A windy gale becomes a cozy blizzard. Tufts of grass and the tiny life of plants stands out with new poignancy in the chill of winter when snow is heavy on the ground. Little sounds are magnified, like the rustle of snow falling from a burdened branch and landing with a soft sigh in the snow below. Little bird feet that hardly bend the grass in summer leave bewildering prints in the snow. Cold never seems as cold when snow is falling.

There must be magic in the snow.

We had just enough snow on Friday night to count, in my books at least, as a White Christmas, and Sarah and I made a point yesterday to get out and enjoy it thoroughly. With the goal of ending up with Remington and Dove, we set out at 3:45, bundled up and armed with our cameras.

Little things kept catching my eye, in ways that are different from the summer months. Winter is the season of shifting lights and shadows, and the life of winter is in the play of light and dark, the sparkle of frost in the moonlight, or the blue shadows in the snow beneath the trees. It was fitting, then, that what ended up tugging at my mind about this little family of coneflowers wasn’t even the flower stalks and heads themselves, but what stretched behind them. The magic of snow and the enchantment of light.

With the sinking sunlight in the west, the smoke from my uncle’s burnpiles a few hilltops over rose up like a fog and drifted north. The farthest hills and Harney Peak were nearly obscured, with their easterly slopes no longer lit by the sun. Shadowed hillsides shimmered blue, while sunlit little bluestem glowed golden, sparkling warmly in the chill winter air. Even the air seems to sparkle as the temperatures drop.

Tiny footprints of rabbits and delicate hoof prints of deer leave dimples in the snow. The snow doesn’t keep secrets. Gently-worn tire tracks, leftover from summer and not even deep enough to call a trail, were filled with snow and stretched on until they disappeared over the hill or into the trees. When spring comes and the grass grows back green and tall, the tire tracks will disappear, blending back into the landscape, overtaken by springtime. But winter remembers.

Even after a hard frost and inches of snow and months of winter weather, remnants of life still remain in the plants. Green leaves at the base of a taller plant, or tiny patches of woodsorrel or thistle, or these little leaves, unbitten by the frost. It amazes me to see how well God equips His Creation, and how hardy even the most delicate-seeming things really are. What wonderful capacity for survival God lavished on these, the works of His hands.

When we clambered out of a little hollow and up into the meadow where the horses are, the sky was a clear, pure blue, the snow a clean, pure white, and Harney Peak was visible in the distance. The horses saw us and came nearer to socialize. Dove was shy as usual, but I expected the snow to have put some spunk and spice into Remington. Instead of spunk and spice, he was mellow and affectionate, almost like a big dog. Each breath puffed a cloud of fog, and his hooves kicked up sparkling snow. Little Dove stood a ways off, content to watch from a distance.

The most mundane things take on new life in the snow. These little plants, brown at first sight, turned out to be red, when I crouched down to look closer at them. They seemed like tiny berries. The twiggy plants covered a hillside, catching the last of the light of the afternoon.

Shadows lengthened. When we finally got back to the top of our ridge and looked down at our cabin and the Miner’s Cabin, the sun had been behind the hills for awhile. Home looked cozy. Turkish coffee sounded good. No matter the season, I enjoy a good hike around our place. But in the snow, everything just looks different. New things are highlighted. Normally overlooked things stand out. There’s whimsy. A different sort of beauty. A touch of magic.